The List: 20 Sep 1996 (Issue 289)

Put a Tiger in your tank- top for improved chart efficiency. Fiona Shepherd listens to the bumpkin rumble.

Another bunch of renegade musicians have semi-stormed the charts! Number 36 with a bullet! Hold the front page!

Except this bunch aren‘t Mansun. Kula Shaker. .loyrider or any of the other relativeIy/fairly/utterly useless generic guitar-wielding retroheads who have been staging chart invasions on a regular basis so far this year. This bunch are slightly naff as opposed to tastefully influenced. This bunch are originally country bumpkins who moved to the Big Smoke and fell into a band together rather than urbane city slickers born to pose. This bunch made a chaotic. confident. fun single ‘Race‘ which made an idiosyncratic impression on Radio l. booming out of Chris Evans‘ show on a regular basis like the blast of fresh air it was.

This band are Tiger. and they‘re grrrrrreat!

Assembled from various parts of the south of England (Hello Princes Risborough! Step forward somewhere in Bedfordshire! You‘re looking good Bath!). but only fully formed in London round the axis of singer and songwriter Dan Laidler and guitarist Julie Sims. Tiger made their mark almost immediately with their hectic. melodic sound.

‘I think what we’re really good at is being able to do what we want.‘ says Sims. ‘For some people it‘s quite difﬁcult to actually put themselves into their music because they‘re overwhelmed by their inﬂuences. 1 think it’s a very difficult thing to do what you think is good. not what other people think is good, not be dictated to. I think we‘re good at just being

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ourselves . . . and also we‘re really good lager drinkers!‘

Being themselves involves a catalogue of lifestyle influences that would have most people choking on their spinach tortellini. Heavy metal t-shitts. a love of Toyotas and an adolescent admiration for casuals should not be allowed to go together — and in fact they probably don‘t. not even in Tiger‘s world. but they have all been mentioned in dispatches.

‘Some things are consciously crap and we quite like that.‘ says Sims. ‘We quite like doing embarrassing things because it upsets people and confuses them. it‘s not trying to do what people think is cool. so because you don‘t do that it could be seen as naff. We get away with it. It‘s boring when

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everybody does the latest thing. We‘re anti-style-conscious really.‘

Given Tiger‘s commitment to their self-confessed dodgy tastes. the title of their debut album, which they‘ve just finished recording for a November release. seems ironic. We Are Puppets is not a statement which could be applied to the quintet. Rather than be babied by their paymasters. the group have insisted on producing an album as quickly as time allows.

‘ln going in really quickly what we‘ve tried to do is capture the very early. quite naive pop sound.’ says Sims. ‘lt‘s quite on the edge. quite anarchic when we play live because we haven‘t done that many gigs. Under Dan‘s melodies. which are very inspired. l feel that we have a freedom to do whatever we

‘ \ Tiger: good lager drinkers and Toyota lovers want.‘

This includes using a Moog synthesizer as a bass guitar substitute (they now have bass in their line-up however) and Sim‘s rather distinctive guitar sound. which she understandably puts down to the fact that her guitar only has three strings all of which are tuned to ‘A’.

‘It was how the songs were written. Dan’s guitar only had three strings on it and he didn‘t know how to tune it!‘

From such lack of tuition do great mistakes occur. The taste police should never have allowed Tiger to happen. but fortunately for insane individuals everywhere those pesky kids fooled them again.

Tiger play King Tut's. Glasgow on Sun 29.

EEEIIIIIIIIII Rope trick

let us raise our glasses to iiocket Fm The Crypt. For the band that always seemed too damned good to chine with popular taste are now bustln’ out nl Top 0! The Popsand The Chan Show with the year’s most deserved hit, ’On A iiope’ - helped along, no doubt, by its duckling- tickling, puppy-tondllng video. Surely, we cry, this is where the spirit of rock ’n’ roll lurks in the Ne. iiad‘iinAiiope’notbeensucha brilliant single In the that place, BFTC’s set at ileading night have helped boost their fortunes, despite the tact that the band had expressed their loathing at all rock iestlvals betorehand. A aid-set power cut and an inprolptu exchange oi lootwear

impression on those who witnessed it. Sax player Apollo 9 insists he still has the shoes he acquired on that

liock Fro- Th_e Crypt: are you hard enough to be in their gang? . with the audience left an Indeilbie

aspirations when it starts. Me a

record or go on tour or lust play live in

irnnt ct people tor the iirst the. ‘There are those bands, but I don’t

occasion - ‘iust polished ’em up today’ - and he wants it understood that this globe-trotting, hit-making lifestyle wasn’t what they were striving tor when they started out in San Diego.

‘iinly bands on TV do that. I think most people have pretty realistic want to associate myself with them. They’ll look good tor ten minutes oi tame, but then they’re done and they lead an embarrassing lite tor the rest ot their lives . . .’ ills tone darkens. ‘A shaneiul lle.’

So with iiFTC’s star most detinltely in the ascendent, is Apollo finding it any easier to think of this as a career? ‘ﬂl, no. I know l’rn going to be doing this tor a while. And a while could be six months or ten years, I don’t know. In . . . westlllgotthingswegottaget done.’ So give ’enr enough rope, iolts. (Alastair Mabbott)